John Briggs, Former OC State Assemblymember/Senator, Still an Asshole After All These Years

I about spit my morning Makers when I came across a New York Times article extolling the virtuous of a regretful John Briggs. Why, had the notorious ex-OC state senator/assemblymember, who authored 1978's Neanderthalic Proposition 7 6 (forever remembered as the Briggs Amendment that sought to ban homosexuals from being school teachers (an idea so retrograde even Reagan was against it), found the rainbow?

Alas, it was his son, Ron Biggs, and the political fuckup that pained him so was another political black stain pushed by his father in the 1978 election: Proposition 7, which set into motion the modern-day prison-industrial complex that's bankrupting California for decades to come.

Ron is trying to get Prop. 7 repealed, admitting it's been a drain on California. John's stance? He thinks it's the state's fault the death penalty doesn't work, and therefore we should continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to put people on death row for decades instead of saving money by merely putting them in the hole for life. But Ron is undaunted.

"I have made it my mission to get his support for life without parole," he told the Gray Lady. "That may be a high bar, but that's my mission."

Gustavo Arellano is the editor of OC Weekly, author of the syndicated column "¡Ask a Mexican!", and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. He started at the paper with an angry, fake letter to the editor and went from there—only in Anacrime!